


what if i'm someone i don't want around?

by acheybones



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Agoraphobia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anxiety Disorder, Artist Steve Rogers, Asthmatic Steve Rogers, Brief suicidal thoughts, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Is Not A Veteran, Canon Disabled Character, Caretaking, Chronic Pain, Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Relationships, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Matchmaker Sam Wilson, Medicinal Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Trichotillomania, No One Gets Corona, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Paramedic Sam Wilson, Pet Names, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Quote: I understood that reference, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, So much angst, Sort Of, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Telecommunication, Texting, Therapist Bruce Banner, Unconventional Relationship, Web Designer Bucky Barnes, author has anxiety and is not handling quarantine well, bucky is just a beefy boy, but not winter soldier, facetime dates, i use that tag in everything, like it's mentioned in passing, no beta we die like men, not bad for the end of the world, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:41:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acheybones/pseuds/acheybones
Summary: "I'm doing okay." He said finally."Lying through your teeth is what you're doing," Bucky knew he couldn't lie to Sam, but he insisted on trying for his own pride. "No one is doing okay, Buck, and that's alright." The snark his friend usually gave him was replaced with what Bucky believed sounded like genuine concern. Maybe Sam had gotten one too many dispatch calls about depressed, agoraphobic New Yorkers who were handling the new downtime and precariousness poorly."Not bad for the end of the world." Bucky sighed.+or, Bucky Barnes is anxious, agoraphobic, and living through COVID-19 in Brooklyn. The only thing keeping him sane is the skinny blonde Sam insisted would be the perfect socially distant companion.(title from "Falling" by Harry Styles" - warning for lots of angst, self-deprecation, and Factime calls)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 21
Kudos: 136





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the keeper of fragile things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627418) by [FanGirling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanGirling/pseuds/FanGirling). 



> quarantine fic because i am anxious and asthmatic, enjoy <3
> 
> loosely inspired by "the keeper of fragile things" by FanGirling:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627418/chapters/59497891

It's an innocent text message, really. One that Bucky shouldn't have such a problem with, but he does. His hands shake like a cyclone is spinning through his chest and threatening to break free from his ribcage. Two sentences is apparently all it takes for his mind to go absolutely stupid.

**stevie:**

**i know that it's wishful thinking, but i'd love to take you out when this is all over. maybe a socially distant drink?**

Quarantine had been kind to Bucky. Having his groceries delivered, communicating exclusively through text messaging, working from the safety of his couch. For once in his life, it felt like the rest of the world was acclimating to Bucky. No one was forcing him to spend fifteen minutes a day in some book store as a means of "exposure therapy." No one was hounding him for taking all of his meals in the safety of his own apartment.

Bucky wasn't just doing what felt right to him, he was doing what was right for everyone. At least, that's what he told himself.

As nice as it felt that the rest of the world was realizing his habits weren't as weird as the vitriol he received made him believe, quarantine had also been unkind to Bucky. The uncertainty was nauseating. His sister was newly expecting, barely nine weeks with her first child. This was the first of a nine inning baseball game, and it looked like it would be going into overtime.

He felt fingers creep up into his hair, and his breath caught in his throat before he realized they were his own. His fingers waltzed gently along his neck until they reached a patch just at the nape of his neck. His hair was long enough to cover the damage done there.

Before he could grab hold, something in him pulled his own hand away. He looked away from his phone and down to his hand like it had come alive, but saw only where his teeth had worried the skin of his cuticles to red and raw. He tore his eyes away and shoved the hand into the pocket of his sweatpants.

His mind was running a mile a minute, and he couldn't focus on anything. He thinks about what quarantining with Steve would be like; long legs he's only seen from his Instagram profile curled across Bucky's lap while Steve draws in his sketchbook and Bucky watches episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen. He thinks about falling asleep with Steve curled up against his chest, finding themselves in the broken halves of the other. Thinks about how whenever this is all over he wants to wrap an arm around Steve's waist and show him off in every bar in Brooklyn until they stumble home and nimble fingers work their way through Bucky's hair. The cyclone in his chest slows to a soft cracking in his heart whenever he realizes he'll never be able to do any of it.

**

_"How's quarantine treating you?" Sam asked, shoveling chips in his mouth on the other side of their FaceTime call._

_Bucky pulled the corners of his blanket tighter around his shoulders, crossing his legs and hoping that his silence served as a good enough answer. He felt a strange guilt talking about his own Corona struggles. His friend was a paramedic, and was surely putting himself in much more dangerous situations than Bucky was when he had to decide on what to make for lunch or which spin-off of 90 Day Fiancé he was getting wine drunk to._

_"I'm doing okay." He said finally._

_"Lying through your teeth is what you're doing," Bucky knew he couldn't lie to Sam, but he insisted on trying for his own pride. "No one is doing okay, Bucky, and that's alright." The snark his friend usually gave him was replaced with what Bucky believed sounded like genuine concern. Maybe Sam had gotten one too many dispatch calls about depressed, agoraphobic New Yorkers who were handling the new downtime and precariousness poorly._

_"Not bad for the end of the world." Bucky sighed._

_“You know, now’s a good ‘a time as any to make some new friends. Telecommunication might take the pressure off. And before you blow a fuse spinning that brain of yours, no, I am not saying that you’re bothering me with your friendship. Wipe that look off your mug.”_

_Bucky could see Sam scrolling on his phone in the corner of his screen. His therapist, Bruce, thought that Bucky was handling everything fairly well given the circumstances, thank you very much._

_“And yeah, I know Bruce is proud of you for hanging in there,” Sam began, still on his phone. Bucky cursed under his breath, maybe he would benefit from some new companionship. “But, I think I have someone in mind. He stays holed up in your corner of New York drawing in his apartment all day.”_

_Bucky’s phone pinged with a text message from Sam with a link to an Instagram profile. Based on the ping that echoed from Sam’s phone on his end, and the notification that @stvrgrs had followed him on Instagram, Bucky wasn’t the only one Sam had been messaging._

_Steve definitely isn’t unattractive. He has a look that says “true Brooklyn hipster”, confident and poised in the photo grid riddled with photos from his sketchbook and sunrise shots from his fire escape. Bucky can’t fathom what he and Steve would have to bond over._

_“Give him a chance. You might get along better than you think.” Sam reassures, and Bucky realizes that his face must be permanently stuck in a worry._

**

Maybe Bucky was being stupid. There was no end in sight to quarantine, and at the earliest they'd probably have to enjoy their drinks from a safe distance. If the news he caught in bits and pieces was any indication of how seriously everyone was taking the quarantine, there would still be far too many people for Bucky to relax comfortably.

Bucky feels like every minute he doesn’t talk to Steve is just another minute until he disappoints him. He holds his phone back up, dialing Steve’s number in one fluid motion before he realizes that he’s even doing it.

“I’m not what you think I am.” It rushes out of his mouth before Steve can even say hello.

“We’ve been video chatting for six months now, Bucky, it’s a little late to convince me you’re a catfish.”

“What if— what if I..” His fingers twitched and his thumb picked at a scab that had formed on the middle finger of the same hand.

“Take your time.” Steve was too damn good for this world. Too good for Bucky, especially.

“What if I disappoint you? What if— what if I’m someone that you don't want around? Hell, I don’t even want myself around half the time. I feel like when I actually get to meet you, then you’ll just be disappointed.”

“Why do you think that, Buck?” Steve’s voice was gentle, but firm.

Bucky thinks _‘You don’t want someone who’s gonna have a panic attack as soon as they hit the pavement for the first time in six months.’_

Instead, he says, “Because you deserve someone who can take you out and show you off for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Someone who isn’t so apprehensive about being a functioning human.” His hand is in his hair again, not pulling enough to free it from his scalp but enough of a tug that it’s keeping him grounded in Steve.

“And you deserve someone who can take you dancing for more than fifteen minutes and doesn’t get backaches waiting in line at the grocery store,” Steve gives a sad sigh, “We aren’t perfect Buck, but I think you’re pretty close.”

“You can’t help any of that, Steve.” In the half-year they had been virtually courting one another, they had reached a comfortable vulnerability, as much of a paradox as it was. Just two chronically ill boys desperate to hide away from the world in each other.

“And you can?” Steve’s voice was deep and soothing to Bucky, but he couldn’t bite back the snark that reminded Bucky so much of why Sam and Steve were friends.

Steve cut him off before Bucky could stutter out a reply. “Sweetheart, listen. Even if it wasn’t too dangerous for me to be outside, even if I didn’t have to worry about being compromised, there’s no one else I’d want to be surviving this with. Even if I have to wait another six months before I can hold you like I want to, it’d be worth it.”

Bucky let his hand fall. “You say that, I’m just afraid that I won’t be. I don’t want to be more trouble than I’m worth.”

Steve laughed at that. “You’ve seen all the internet fights I get into, imagine how worse it is when I can get my hands on someone.”

“Wouldn’t be a very good boyfriend if I let you get your ass beat, would I?” Bucky didn’t even register what he had said until after it came out. It flowed from his lips with a confidence that he knew he didn’t possess. Steve wasn’t his boyfriend, that wasn’t a line they had crossed yet. Steve interrupted him before he could make a bigger idiot of himself.

“Hey, can you video chat?” Bucky could hear paper rustling in the background. He grabbed his laptop from the coffee table and ended his phone call with Steve. Maybe Steve wanted to metaphorically look him in the eyes when he ended things. Instead, he opened up the green FaceTime app on his computer and found Steve in his recents.

When Steve’s face filled his screen, he couldn’t fight back the fond smile that crossed his face. The blonde was definitely in need of a haircut, his bangs falling over his forehead and into his eyes, but he was the type of adorable scruffy that made Bucky want to wrap him up in a blanket in his lap. The corners of Steve’s eyes crinkled behind his glasses, the blue of his eyes pronounced by the reflective light of his screen.

Steve was flipping through his sketchbook in his lap, not looking at Bucky. “Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted that photo of you on my Instagram?”

Did he ever. Bucky had drifted off, feeling the early pull of a migraine, when Steve had snapped the photo of him. When Bucky woke up the next morning, he was greeted with a photo of the profile of his chest, head turned away to one side so it was out of the view of the Camera. Steve’s comments had been rife with smirking emoji’s and heart eyes, his followers scrambling to find out the identity of the mystery man that Steve had just so happened to forget to tag. Bucky had feigned being pissed at him, but he couldn’t deny the warmth that spread through his chest at the thought of Steve showing him off to the world. Like he _belonged_ to Steve. Bucky had to fight back a whimper at the thought.

“I might.” Bucky said finally.

“You were so pissy with me for days, but you never did want me to delete it.” Steve looked up at the camera and met Bucky’s eyes, crooked grin on his face.

“I don’t want to tell you what to do.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, not letting his grin falter. “For some reason, I have a hard time believing that. Anyway, you should know that’s far from the only photo I’ve taken of you.”

Steve turned his camera so Bucky could see where he was holding his sketchbook open, and Bucky’s breath caught in his throat.

It was him, headphones covering his ears and eyes locked on his screen. Bucky remembered the night. He was neck deep in coding issues for a client’s website, and Steve’s virtual presence was the only thing that kept him from feeling like he was going to explode. Bucky had been so deep in fixing the code that he must have drowned out the soft scratch of Steve’s pencils on the paper.

On the opposite page was another drawing of Bucky, wrapped up in a sweatshirt and in the middle of bringing popcorn to his mouth. Bucky recognized that night too. Him and Steve had settled in for a carefully synced movie date over their webcams, and Bucky had been too engrossed in watching the Willoughby children get rid of their parents and find a real family to notice that Steve wasn’t nearly as invested in the movie.

This time, Bucky didn’t fight back the smile that threatened to rip his face in half.

Steve closed the book, resting his chin in his hand. “So, last time I’ll ask you, Buck. Do you want me to delete that picture?”

Bucky’s heart welled up in his chest. He wanted to be Steve’s, wanted the whole world to know that he was his. Even if Bucky didn’t feel like he deserved someone as great as Steve, he wanted to give Steve everything he could ever want. For some reason, he wanted Bucky.

“You don’t have to.” Bucky said.

Steve thought for a minute, then picked his phone up from where it had been thrown on his comforter.

“Think I’d rather have you to myself.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never planned on writing another chapter for this, but i'm stressed and self-soothing so this happened. hope you enjoy. ❤️

Some days are harder than others. Some days, it's all Steve can do to force himself out of bed to stand in the shower, weight entirely propped up by the wall while the stream works on the pain in his back. After a while, the water hitting his body shifts from soothing to painful, and he has to force himself into whatever softest clothes he can find. There are times when even the brush of the fabric on his back is too much, but his body runs cold enough as it is. He settles on a baby blue sweatshirt before he takes two muscle relaxers and crawls back under the blankets. 

It may or may not have something to do with Bucky telling Steve how pretty he is in blue.

His boss is pretty good most days about it, and today is most days. Steve is too much of a self-proclaimed try hard to ever fall far enough behind in his work for one bad day to throw him too far off. 

When Steve had explained his pain to Bucky, he always liked the idea of the spoon theory; everyone is given a number of spoons to get life done, and some people require more spoons than others. Today, Steve's entire silverware drawer is empty.

He think it's just this side of pathetic, really, how much he just wants Bucky here. Wants to curl up against his chest and have him tell Steve that everything's going to be alright even if he has no way of knowing. That Steve isn't as worthless or invalid as his brain tells him he is just because it hurts too badly to get out of bed and go back to his tablet.

Steve doesn't get to feel sorry for himself for too long before his phone's lighting with an incoming Facetime call from Bucky. He tries to wipe his face of how pathetic he feels so that Bucky doesn't think something's wrong, and rolls from his stomach on to his side to answer.

"Mornin', babydoll." Bucky's in his kitchen, making his morning tea. Steve remembers Bucky telling him that he had grown to prefer it to coffee when he realized that caffeine didn't help his anxiety any.

"Good morning, Buck." Steve can't help but smile at the brunette on his screen, but as soon as Bucky looks up at him, the charade is over.

"You feeling alright, Stevie?" His voice is still waking up, but Steve feels his feeble heart clench at the concern in Bucky's voice.

Steve is too tired to pretend. "How'd you guess?"

Bucky laughs softly at that, pulling his hair up into a bun and off his neck while his tea steeps. 

"You're still in bed. You're never in bed this late." Bucky isn't accusatory or condescending, and Steve appreciates it. 'This late' is really just shy of 10 A.M., but the last seven months had really shown who was the morning person between the two of them, and Bucky knew it wasn't him.

Steve shrugs the one shoulder he isn't leaning on.

"It's been worse, I'll be fine." 

"You'll be stubborn is what you'll be." Bucky says, taking a sip of his tea. Steve laughs because he can't deny it.

"Wish you were here." Steve should feel bad when it slips out, but he can't stop it, Bucky doesn't seem to mind.

"I know, baby. I wish I could be. You've taken your Robaxin, yeah?" Bucky asks, earning a nod from Steve.

"Try and go back to sleep. Text me whenever you wake up and I'll UberEats that weird, gluten-free deli by your apartment that you love so much."

"Oh, come on. It's not that bad."

"Listen, I'm a man who knows his bagels. Those are not bagels." Bucky's voice sounds the slightest bit annoyed at Steve's eating habits, but the smile on his face is nothing but fond.

"Fine, but I want french fries, too."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the french fries your little body can stand."

Steve blows a kiss at his screen, because he's a giant nerd.

"Sleep well, baby" is the last Steve hears before turning back on his stomach and closing his eyes.

***

He thinks he might have dreamed about Bucky long before they met. A handsome brunette that Steve never had a name for until Sam had sent him Bucky's Instagram page.

Now when he dreams of Bucky, he holds on tighter than before, because it's the only time they get together.

Today, he walks into an apartment he doesn't recognize outside of the dreams, and Bucky's sitting on the couch waiting for him. He's got his computer in his lap, probably elbow deep in code and socked feet perched on the coffee table, but his eyes light up as soon as Steve walks through the door.

"Come on over, babydoll." Bucky puts his laptop down on the coffee table and beckons Steve over.

Steve makes a line for the loveseat instead, "You're busy, Bucky. I'm alright."

Bucky makes a tsk sound, and reaches a hand out for Steve that gently curls around his hip. He rotates so his back is up against the arm of the couch, and pulls Steve to sit between his legs.

"I know. Let me take care of you anyway." Deft fingers work into the space beneath Steve's ribcage, and it feels like all of the pain is pushed away by Bucky's hands. One hand moves up to rub against Steve's shoulder blades, and he lets the tension he didn't know he was holding fall.

"That's it, Stevie. Just relax for me. I'm here, baby." Bucky pulls Steve's back flush against his chest, and drags his hands up and down Steve's arms. Steve feels him press a kiss behind the back of Steve's ear before he hears a whispered "Missed you."

Steve smiles, because for right now, he has Bucky. If this is the only way that he can have him, Steve will take it.

"Missed you too, sweetheart."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [twitter](http://twitter.com/acheyb0nes) and [tumblr](http://acheybones.tumblr.com) if you're into that


End file.
